Teesside's greatest ever speedway rider has given an enthusiastic welcome to the sport's return to the area.

The Gazette exclusively revealed in its later editions yesterday that Redcar and Cleveland Council had given the green light for a new track to be built at the South Tees Motorsports Park in South Bank.

A new team, most probably called the Redcar Bears, is now set to come to the tapes for the start of next season in March.

It will be the first time speedway has been staged on Teesside since Cleveland Park closed in 1996.

And 1992 world champion and former England skipper Gary Havelock said: "It is fantastic news for the area and for speedway.

"It has been a long, sad time without speedway on Teesside and I know through speaking to people that there is still a lot of interest."

Construction of the new raceway will begin next month after a ten-year lease was agreed with Wolves promoter Chris van Straaten, with former Eastbourne boss Gareth Rogers in day-to-day charge of the operation.

Racing will take place on 28 Thursday evenings from March until October next year and van Straaten will now decide whether to run in the Premier League or Conference League.

In addition, a training school will run on 50 days a year, including four days of free training, with equipment provided, exclusively for the use of the local community.

Havelock, who still lives in Marton, learned the ropes at Cleveland Park and now hopes to be involved in finding the next generation of speedway stars from Teesside.

"They want to set up a training academy there, so anything is possible," he said. "I was asked if I would like to be involved in the training side of things some time ago and nothing has changed.

"Nothing has been agreed because we had to wait for permission to be granted - but now that it has, hopefully we'll be able to sit down in the near future and see what direction we are going to go in."